On Losing the Power of Speech

Summe Pater, quodcunque tuum de corpore Numen
Hoc statuat, precibus Christus adesse velit:
Ingenio parcas, nec sit mihi culpa rogâsse,
Qua solum potero parte, placere tibi.
Nocte, inter 16 et 17 Junii 1783Almighty Father, whatever Thy Divinity decrees concerning this body, may Christ be willing to hear my prayers: spare my mind, and let it not be an offence in me to ask to please Thee with the only faculty with which I can do so.
Night, between 16 and 17 June 1783

Gnothi Seauton

Know Thyself
(After the revision and correction of the English Dictionary)When Scaliger after long struggle finally finished his dictionary, thoroughly bored with the slender achievement, indignant at the worthless study and the trouble-some trifles, he groaned in hatred, and prescribed writing dictionaries for condemned criminals, one punishment in place of all other punishments.

On Seeing a Portrait of Mrs Montagu

Had this fair figure which this frame displays,
Adorn'd in Roman times the brightest days,
In every dome, in every sacred place,
Her statue would have breath'd an added grace,
And on its basis would have been enroll'd,
" This is Minerva, cast in Virtue's mould."

Mnemosyne

In classic beauty, cold, immaculate,
A voiceful sculpture, stern and still she stands,
Upon her brow deep-chiselled love and hate,
That sorrow o'er dead roses in her hands.

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